CA Student Aid Commission released financial aid form for AB 540 students Monday
Financial Aid Applications for ab 540 Students
Two applications are being used at UCLA to calculate financial aid eligibility for private, institutional aid under the CA Dream Act:
Cal Dream Application (can be accessed at https://dream.csac.ca.gov/)
- Created by the California Student Aid Commission
- Can be used by any AB 540 student at UC, CSU and California community colleges
UCLA Student Aid Application for Dream Act Students (can be accessed at http://ucla.in/HiCDWW)
- Created by UCLA Financial Aid Office
- Can be used only by AB 540 students at UCLA
Continuing UCLA students must submit either one of the applications by June 1. Entering students must submit by June 29.
SOURCE: California Student Aid Commission and UCLA spokesman Ricardo Vasquez
Compiled by Emily Suh, Bruin contributor
By Emily Suh
April 6, 2012 1:38 a.m.
Correction: The original version of this headline contained an error. The California Student Aid Commission released the financial aid form for AB 540 students on Monday.
Nonresident students began applying for private scholarships under the California Dream Act with the release of a new financial aid form from the California Student Aid Commission on Monday.
The passage of the California Dream Act in January 2012 marks the first time that California colleges will grant institutional aid to AB 540 students.
For most qualifying students, these are the first financial aid forms they have ever filled out.
“Most of us have never had to deal with this,” said Carlos Hernandez, a fourth-year psychobiology student and co-chair of IDEAS at UCLA, a group that provides support for undocumented students on campus.”We never bothered to know how the system works in terms of financial aid because we were excluded from it.”
Undocumented students and other nonresident students who do not demonstrate legal residency in the state of California were prohibited from receiving private and state scholarship before the California Dream Act passed in October 2011.
The first portion of the law went into effect in January, giving AB 540 students access to private aid such as grants from the UC. The remaining part of the legislation will allow the same students to apply for aid from the state, including Cal Grants and fee waivers, in January 2013.
The University of California and California State University worked with the state’s student aid commission, which administers grants awarded by the state, to create the statewide Cal Dream application for the past few months.
The application will determine financial aid eligibility for qualified students who cannot fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid for various reasons, including not having a social security number, said Diana Fuentes-Michel, the executive director of the California Student Aid Commission.
Each applicant will receive a California Personal Identification Number (PIN) after completing the application, which will serve as their electronic signature for future correspondence with the California Student Aid Commission, according to the application form.
UCLA created its own application before the California Student Aid Commission in order to award institutional aid to students as soon as possible, said David Alcocer, associate director of university programs at UC Office of the President.
UCLA’s application, known as the Student Aid Application for Dream Act Students, is available online for download. Once printed and completed, they should be turned into the UCLA financial aid office in Murphy Hall.
AB 540 students at UCLA can fill out either the UCLA application or the form created by the student aid commission, the “Cal Dream” Application, said Ricardo Vazquez, a UCLA spokesperson. The applications are due by June 1 for continuing students and June 29 for entering students.
But the plan is to phase into the state’s version of the application eventually, Vazquez said. Starting in a few weeks, UCLA Financial Aid will encourage students to use the state application instead of the one provided by the campus office.
“The goal is to have students use the (Cal Dream) Application for all AB 540 students in the UC system, the California State University and the California community colleges,” Fuentes-Michel said.
Colleges will use information from the application to award institutional, or private, aid to those students.
The “Cal Dream” application is available for viewing and can be completed on the California Student Aid Commission website.
To receive the aid, students must have attended a California high school for three years and graduated. They must also confirm that they are in the process of applying for legal residency.
Some UC campuses, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, were already working to award AB 540 students privately funded scholarships that might be available for the remainder of 2011-12, Alcocer said. Most other campuses, however, did not create a form and may not have had enough surplus funds to give aid starting in early 2012.
“The availability of (scholarship) funds (for AB 540 students) varies by campus, and some campuses may not have had any additional funds to award this year,” Alcocer said.
IDEAS has worked with the financial aid office for the past year to educate students on how to apply for private scholarships, Hernandez said. Earlier in the year, the financial aid office held workshops on how to apply for financial aid and offered special drop-in counseling hours specifically for AB 540 students, he added.
“With the new application from the (student aid) commission, there’s a lot of confusion about the different forms and what students need to do to qualify,” Hernandez said. “We’re looking into working with the financial aid office again to try and help students with a process that’s completely new to them.”
With contributing reports from Jenna Belhumeur, Bruin contributor.
